


The Storytellers

by notjustmom



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Eventual Fluff, M/M, Peter is Stephen's adopted son, Sort Of, Unreliable Narrator, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-05-28 09:17:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 16,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19391119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjustmom/pseuds/notjustmom
Summary: Stephen Strange is a reclusive best-selling author with a bad case of writer's block and single father to his adopted son, Peter Parker, ever since his partner's death two years earlier. One morning Peter dreams of a superhero in armor, and eventually the two of them create Iron Man together.Tony Stark is an arrogant billionaire weapons designer who wakes up in Afghanistan to discover the only way out is to reinvent himself. Later he realizes his life is not quite what it seems...





	1. "...Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”  ― Terry Pratchett

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scrub456](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrub456/gifts).



> For my partner in crime, who has patiently put up with me whining about my writer's block for the last few months.

It was exactly two years since Ben had left the house to go grocery shopping, and never returned home. For once Peter hadn’t gone with him, because he was too lost in his latest drawing to even respond to his dad ruffling his hair, and Stephen often wondered if he would have driven differently if Peter had been in the car with him, or if it would have happened anyway, and instead of losing just his partner of nearly twenty-five years, he also would have lost the child they had fought so hard to adopt. It had been Ben’s dream to have a child he could raise, and teach, but Stephen found to his amazement that he too, had become attached to the tiny boy with auburn curls and bright blue eyes, who smiled at him, as if he knew him the first time he had awkwardly cradled him in his hands.

But there were always chapters to write or fuss over, and book tours, and eventually Ben had taken over the parenting and essentially running the household without much help from him. Stephen wondered again at how he had never complained, how he always came to bed with stories about their son, and never blamed him, as he glared at the empty screen. The words had left him even before Ben died, and he knew he would have forgotten what he looked like if not for Peter constantly drawing his late father, as he had looked in life, not as he had last seen him when he identified him in the morgue. He shook his head, and finally closed his laptop. 

There was nothing to save, nothing to delete, there was simply a lot of nothing. He stared at the steam coming from his mug on his desk and couldn’t remember leaving his office to make coffee, let alone bringing the cup back into this room, his sanctuary from what others would consider ‘real life.’ He shook his head as he also noticed the piece of toast with strawberry jam on it for the first time and realized Peter must have brought it in and left again without saying a word. He hadn’t said good morning, just wanted to make sure he ate something, and knew as Ben had known so well, that he couldn’t face the day without coffee.

“Damn.” He ran his fingers through the curls that had long needed trimming, and knew one day soon he would have to leave the house to get his hair cut, if for no other reason. He picked up the coffee and sighed after he took his first sip, pausing to consider when Peter had learned to make coffee the way he liked it, maybe Ben had taught him, or he had, like everything else over the last two years simply taught himself, and he realized it bothered him that he didn’t know the answer. He slowly got to his feet, and carried the tray that held his coffee and plate of toast into the brightly lit kitchen to find Peter at the table, head bent over his sketchbook, the pencil flying over the paper.

“Good morning, Peter.”

Peter nearly jumped from his chair and the pencil clattered to the floor. He blinked up at him, and Stephen could tell he’d had another rough night. “Pop.”

“Sorry. Thank you for the coffee and toast, I didn’t even hear you come in.”

Peter muttered a surprised, “you’re welcome,” then bent down to retrieve his pencil and erased the stray line from his drawing and closed the book. “Dad taught me, he thought it a good life skill to have, luckily I can’t stand the stuff, otherwise I’d never sleep if I drank the muck you two -” his voice stalled and he looked uncomfortable as he tried to find something to fill the silence.

Stephen tried to smile at him as he sat down next to him. “Can I see what you are working on?”

“It’s - nothing -” Peter started to get to his feet, but stopped as Stephen laid a hand on his arm.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?” He snapped, then picked up his book and pencils and pushed away from the table. “It isn’t your fault that someone ran through a red light -”

Stephen started, then realized it was the first time Peter had talked about losing his dad, the one parent he had really ever known, and he was now left with just him, who hadn’t a clue about how to begin to parent a fifteen year old. 

“I’m just sorry.” He got up from the table, leaving his coffee and toast behind, and went back to his office, shutting the door behind him. Ten minutes later, he heard the front door close quietly as Peter left for school.

He opened his laptop and found three new email messages, two from his long-suffering, but patient editor who checked in each morning at 7:50 precisely without fail, asking after the progress he wasn’t making on the book he hadn’t ever started. The other was from his not so patient publisher who was finally asking for a meeting. As the email reminded him, it had been ‘...four fucking years since your last one, I know it’s harder with Ben being gone, but you had run out of gas long before - sorry, kiddo, but you know it’s the truth…’

For a brief moment, Stephen thought about sending back the advance which he hadn’t touched and firing off an email that would guarantee he would never be published again, even if he found the words again, but refrained and simply agreed to meet his publisher for lunch. He closed the laptop once more, then went back into the kitchen and found Peter had left the drawing on the kitchen table with a note.

_Pop -_

_Had a dream last night, for once it wasn’t a nightmare about what happened to Dad. It was about a superhero, a bit like the ones Dad and I would read about in the comics - I know it seems kinda childish, but he seemed so real, I had to draw it out before I forgot him. He’s not a good guy at the beginning, he’s pretty much a spoiled, rich inventor, who designs and sells weapons, but then he gets captured, and he escapes by making a suit out of the weapons that the bad guys had got their hands on, he gets home and decides to become a superhero, even though he’s just a guy in a suit of armor, and instead of hiding his identity like all the other guys decides to tell everyone who he is - crazy. But he seemed so real, I dunno. I’m sorry about this morning. I don’t blame you for anything, I just really miss Dad a lot, and I sometimes wonder if you do. Sorry. Never mind. I have band practice after school. See you at dinner._

_\- Peter ___

__

__Stephen picked up the drawing and stared at it; it was just a quick pencil sketch by Peter's standards, but intricate, and even without seeing the face under the mask, he sensed the arrogance of a man who could tell the world that he was going to save it after spending his life designing weapons that could destroy it hundreds of times over. He put the drawing down, poured himself another cup of coffee, then pulled his phone from his pocket and left a message on Nick Fury’s voice mail. “Sorry, Nick, have to cancel lunch, something came up. Talk to you soon.”_ _

__He turned off his phone and dropped it on the kitchen counter, then picked up his cup of coffee and drained it, and after carefully washing the mug by hand and drying it, he walked back to the table, and picked up Peter’s drawing and note, then disappeared into his office until it was time to decide what to make for dinner._ _


	2. “Tears are words that need to be written.”  ― Paulo Coelho

Peter wasn’t sure what to expect when he returned home that night; he had never talked about what had happened to his dad with Pop before, it had just sort of slipped out, and he wasn’t quite sure why it had happened that morning. Maybe it was just that it was two years to the day, and they had never really talked about it. He had school to deal with, and life had essentially gone on as it had before, except for the giant hole where his dad had been. He knew Pop missed him, he had to, didn’t he? He opened the front door to find him standing at the stove, which was a rarity in itself; he didn’t even know he knew how to cook, his dad had always done the cooking, and once he was gone, Peter had done most of the cooking if they didn’t order take-out.

“Pop?”

“Hey, Peter. Don’t worry, it’s just spaghetti, I don’t think even I can mess it up.”

“No, it’s fine.” He glanced over at the table to see his drawing and note were still there where he had left them that morning, and sighed, disappointed, but relieved that he hadn’t seen what he had written. “I’m just going to put my stuff away, I have a lot of homework -”

“I wrote something today.” Stephen mumbled at the sauce, and Peter nearly missed it over the sound of the fan.

“What?”

“I, uhm, I read what you wrote, and saw your drawing, and I wrote for hours today, I don’t know what it is really, it’s different from the ‘stuff’ as you called it, that I used to write -”

“Pop -”

“It doesn’t matter, most of the books I wrote, I needed to write them then, mostly I wrote them for your dad, because I wasn’t good at -” he looked up at Peter and shrugged his shoulders then went on, “I’ve never been good at telling people - I wasn’t good at telling him how I felt, even though I knew he knew, at least it seemed that way. We - he was so different -”

Peter suddenly jumped up from the table and ran to his room, slamming the door closed behind him and locking it.

Stephen swore to himself as he turned off the sauce he had spent the last hour making. Peter had suddenly remembered what he hadn’t until this moment, it was the same meal Ben had made the night before he died. He turned off the lights in the kitchen, and sat down at the table as the sun went down and finally allowed himself to weep for the man he had lost two years earlier.

Peter yawned and looked at his phone, 11:45PM. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but he hadn’t slept that much the night before after the dream woke him up. He shouldn’t have bolted, he knew Pop was just trying to do better, to have a real conversation with him, but the smell of his dad’s sauce on the stove again after two years was just too much. He threw the covers off then walked to the door and found a manila envelope, that had been pushed under it. He picked it up cautiously and read the note in Pop’s nearly illegible scrawl. His dad had always joked that Pop should have been a doctor, as bad as his handwriting was -

_Peter -_

_I messed up tonight, I didn’t think. I’m so sorry. I read your note this morning, and I hope this might be close to what you were thinking this character might be, I might have gotten a bit carried away, but it’s been such a long time since the words came this easily._

_I love you, kiddo -_

_Pop ___

__

__Peter sat on the edge of his bed and pulled out the thick sheaf of computer paper; he flipped through the pages quickly, but he could tell his Pop had written fifty pages of a graphic novel in just a few hours, all it needed were the illustrations. He slid the pages back into the envelope and placed it on the bed, then fell back onto his pillows and looked up at the detailed universe that his fathers had painted on his ceiling, how many years ago now? He thought he had been five, or six, maybe? He had gone to a long forgotten relative’s house for the weekend and had come back to find his fathers covered head to toe in paint. He couldn’t remember another time when he had seen them so happy together._ _

__Pop was usually holed up in his office writing, or off doing book stuff, while his dad was always there, for whatever he needed; he had learned about the planets, their moons and everything from meteors to black holes from the painting that still looked exactly as it did ten years ago. Together, they had made up stories about alien races, bedtime stories were always the comic books his dad had as a kid, and when new comics came out, those new adventures were added into the mix. When he was seven he had started to create his own characters, they were rough at first, but his dad had encouraged him, kept him from giving up. He had given him his first real sketchbook and pens, and was always there to listen to a new story, no matter how ridiculous it was, until the day he wasn’t._ _

__He yawned and rubbed his eyes and was surprised to find his face wet with tears. He honestly couldn’t remember if he had cried when Pop had told him what had happened. There had been a small, private service, ashes were scattered at the park where they spent so much of their time when he had been younger, but he couldn’t remember crying._ _

__“Hell.” He made himself get up and unlock the door, and quietly, he made his way through the house. The lights were still on in the kitchen, and Pop was there at the table, his head nestled on his arms, fast asleep. He studied his father’s face for a few minutes and finally realized what he had always thought was indifference towards him was really the grief he still hadn’t recovered from when his dad had died. He was finally old enough to understand that while he had lost a father, his Pop had lost his partner, the person he had loved longest and most in the world._ _

__“Pop. Wake up, it’s almost midnight.” He watched as his father blinked at him, then sat up slowly and offered him a puzzled smile._ _

__“Peter? Are you okay?”_ _

__“I’m sorry, Pop.”_ _

__Stephen stared at him for a moment, then covered a yawn and shook his head. “What could you possibly have to apologize for? I’m the one who messed up dinner -”_ _

__Peter helped him to his feet and wrapped his arms around him. “I didn’t understand, not really. I just thought about what I had lost, and didn’t consider what you -” He buried his face into Stephen’s shoulder and finally wept hard for everything they had both lost._ _

__Stephen kissed his son’s sleep rumpled curls and held him cautiously at first, then his arms tightened around him as he understood he wasn’t being pushed away. He had been forgiven, at least for now. “We’ll start again tomorrow. For now, it’s time for bed.”_ _

__Peter looked up at his father and wiped at his tears, unsuccessfully. “Would you mind reading me a story? Your story?”_ _

__Stephen ruffled Peter’s hair as Ben once had and nodded at him. “I think you mean our story? Go brush your teeth and I’ll read it until you fall asleep.”_ _

__“Promise?” Peter asked nervously, and Stephen couldn’t help but shake his head in amazement at the hope he saw in his son's eyes._ _

__“I promise, kiddo. I’ll be there in a minute.” He watched as Peter bounded out of the room and realized he hadn’t seen him this happy in years. He glanced upwards, and though he didn’t put much faith into the idea that Ben was watching over them, there were nights like tonight when he wished more than anything that Ben could see and hear them and maybe send him a sign that they would be okay._ _


	3. “With writing, we have second chances.”  ― Jonathan Safran Foer

Of the two of them, Ben had always been the more natural storyteller, he was able to invent a new character on the spot, and he could vividly remember Peter’s brilliant laughter, as Ben would come up with the most ridiculous names and scenarios, while he was one of those writers who had to have everything just so in order to write the stories he had become famous for.

It hadn’t always been this way, as a young writer in love, the words came easily, he could write anywhere and he had written best when chaos had swirled around him. The last few years, and especially since Ben’s death, he needed to exist in a bubble in order for the words to come, when they came at all; the door to his office had to be shut, the room had been soundproofed to insure complete silence, the chair had to be at exactly the right height and in the correct spot, the curtains had to be drawn, unless it was raining that day, and then the windows had to be open - 

But when he had walked into his office with Peter’s sketch and notes that morning, he dropped into his chair, opened a new document, and wrote as if his life depended on it until his hands cramped up and the words came to a halt, fifty pages later. As he sat down in Peter’s desk chair and rolled it closer to his son’s bed, he understood one reason the words had seemed to write themselves. He had written for an audience of one, the teenager who was currently struggling to keep his eyes open even as he was already nearly asleep.

“Go on, Pop. I’m ready.”

Stephen rolled his eyes at him, but nodded as he pulled his reading glasses from his pocket, cleared his throat and began.

_“No one would ever mistake Tony Stark for a hero, super or otherwise. Yes, he was a certified genius, as throughout his life he had tested beyond Einstein and Hawking, though at times he would purposely throw the test, simply because it amused him, more importantly, it would send his father into a rage._

_And yes, he could, on occasion, be generous with his time and money, but it was usually motivated by a suggestion by the Stark Industries board that a well orchestrated philanthropic deed would help to offset the public’s idea that they only made weapons of mass destruction. He would roll his eyes in private, but smile for the cameras and charm the Ivy League journalists and the board would leave him alone for a few months. He had no illusions about what he did, or what his father before him had done. He used his many gifts to design and build weapons for what he considered the best country on the planet, but once he was onto his next project or conquest, he didn’t give much thought to how those weapons were used._

_He was shorter than the average American male, though the public wasn’t aware of that fact due to how the press photographers always shot him. Money had its uses, his best friend James Rhodes would mutter on occasion, but only once he was sure Tony was out of earshot or asleep. Rhodey, his best friend from childhood, his only friend if he were honest, always believed it was a combination of bullying he went through due to his short stature and the emotional trauma he suffered from being Howard Stark’s only child made his closest friend the angriest, yet saddest man he had ever known, definitely not superhero material..." ___

__

__Stephen paused before he continued reading to find Peter watching him with surprise and interest, and if he weren’t mistaken, a bit of pride._ _

__“He’s brilliant, Pop. Dad would have loved him.”_ _

__Stephen leaned over him and kissed his forehead, then whispered, “more tomorrow, Pete. You’ve got school in a few hours. I love you.”_ _

__“Love you, too, Pop.”_ _

__

___“… and yet, there was something in him, something even he hadn’t suspected, until he was faced with impossible odds, that he would one day be the only one who could save the universe…” ____ _

____“What the -?” _He opened his eyes to find himself in a cave, and wondered why it hurt so much to breathe. The last thing he remembered was taking a selfie with, what was his name? _"Jimmy." _But Jimmy was... dead, all those kids in the humvee were dead, and he was - he turned his head and swore loudly, as he yanked on the wires that seemed to tether him to his new dusty and rather unsanitary conditions. _______ _ _

________“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” _a calm voice rumbled at him from somewhere nearby. At least he wasn’t alone in this version of hell. Perhaps the universe was finally calling his bluff. He’d had a good run, he was, what, 37? No, 38. He had made it to 38, only to die forgotten in an Afghanistan cave. Fair enough, he supposed, considering. _____ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________"What did you do to me?" _He ripped apart the poorly wrapped gauze that covered his chest and he knew that life as he had once known it was over even if he managed to survive. _____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________"What did I do to you? I saved your life."_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________Stephen yawned as he noted the time on the clock on Peter’s wall. Two in the morning. He hadn’t been up this late in years, at least not with such purpose. He should try to edit it a bit, maybe make the character more likable? No. Tony was not superhuman, he was just a human being, yes, perhaps he was a rich, entitled arrogant version of a human being, but Stephen already knew he was intelligent, perhaps too intelligent? If he were brave, stubborn and lucky enough - he flipped ahead a couple of pages and began marking through some of the extraneous bits, at times he indulged his tendency to make difficult plot lines less bleak by adding a hopeful bit every so often, but he knew this part of Tony’s story was meant to be brutal, how else - he paused and closed his eyes. How else can one become someone new except through a trial of fire?_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“Have you ever considered your legacy, Stark?” Yinsen prodded verbally at a sore spot._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“My what?” He snorted and stared into the dying fire. The tattered knit gloves he was wearing were fingerless and he was beginning to lose feeling in his fingertips; he rubbed his hands together in an attempt to get the circulation going again._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“Your legacy, Stark. I met you once at a conference, you wouldn’t remember, but even drunk, you delivered your talk with such passion, you were ten times better than those idiots in -”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“Switzerland. I knew I recognized your voice.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“You have a choice to make, Stark -”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________Tony turned on the thinner, older man who thought he had all the answers and muttered, “a choice? What choice do I have? I can do as they ask, build them the Jericho, and they’ll kill me when it’s finished, or I can do nothing and they’ll kill me sooner, if my heart doesn’t get me first.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“Or, you can make a stand, Stark. You can choose to die here, and no one will mourn for you, you will be nothing but a footnote in a few obscure papers, you have survived for a reason, Stark. Most men would have died days ago, but you - you had such great potential, don’t let your legacy die here. You are better than these common criminals. You are the great Tony Stark.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________Stephen loved Yinsen, though even as he had written him, he knew he wouldn’t last long, characters of such purity of heart rarely did. They were always the first to - damn. He rolled the chair over to Peter’s desk and spotted his favorite photo of Peter and Ben, Peter was maybe two, and he was perched on Ben’s shoulders. Peter had his fingers in Ben’s hair, holding on tightly, and Stephen recalled the moment as if he had been transported there, Peter was screeching with delight, as he had taken the picture. They were at a parade or a farmer’s market - he couldn’t remember what they had been doing, but he did recall the feeling that it was one of the best days of his life. Today, or yesterday, more accurately, he supposed, was another. Not just because he had discovered he could still write, but because he could write even with a broken heart and his son, their son had heard it in the words, he had understood and was finally beginning to forgive him, even if he wasn't sure he could forgive himself for the time they had lost._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


	4. “Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”  ― Oscar Wilde

Peter woke up long before the alarm went off, jumped out of bed and searched for the story, finally finding it on his desk where Stephen had left it before he went to bed an hour earlier. He started from the beginning again, and was still reading when Stephen knocked on his door, two hours later.

“Pete?”

“Hmmm…?” As he had been reading he had started doodling along the margins of the story. At first he had drawn out what he imagined Tony Stark had looked like before Afghanistan, small, dark, with dark eyes, and then a suit of armor began to take shape -

“The goatie is perfect,” Stephen murmured at his shoulder. “You’re nearly late for school, I can drive you -”

Peter spun in his chair and stared at him. “Pop - you haven’t - when was the last time you actually drove anywhere?”

Stephen shrugged and began to turn away. “Just thought I’d offer -”

“No, it’s just - I mean - are you okay? I can stay home today, I don’t have any tests, and next week is Christmas break, and to be honest, I’d rather be, I mean - this is, I’ve never read anything like this before, and I’ve - Dad and I, we read everything, every single origin story, but I’ve never read anything so real before.”

“I wrote it for you. It wrote itself, more or less. I’m fine -”

“Pop. You aren’t. I know - hell.”

Stephen raised an eyebrow at him and muttered, “language, Peter. Get ready. You have next week off, we’ll have all week to work on it, I know you’d rather hang out with your friends, but -”

“You mean you want me to work on this with you?” Peter blinked up at him, then looked back down at his rough sketches and shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m not nearly, you must have someone, your publisher - they must have artists better than me.”

His father shook his head and touched his face gently. “This character, he, belongs to you. I can’t explain it. The last few years it’s been so hard for me to write, even before - but this?” He nodded at the pages on Peter’s desk, and looked into his son’s eyes, “this is the easiest thing I’ve ever written - I can see it, hear it in my head - if that makes sense?”

Peter nodded. “Dad -”

“Your dad was always the better storyteller, he had such an imagination, he just didn’t have the patience or the attention span to write out all his stories, so he gave them to you.” He looked around Peter’s room for the first time in years, then cleared his throat and kissed Peter’s forehead. “If you hurry, you’ll make the first bell.”

Peter watched as he walked out of the room, then sighed regretfully at the story before he quickly got ready for school, and grabbed his backpack from the coat rack and the apple his father shoved into his hand as he opened the front door, then ran the five blocks to school, and made it just as the first bell finished ringing.

Yinsen carefully removed the wires from the electromagnet that was currently keeping Tony alive, then quickly pulled it out of his chest. “Hold on, my friend, just breathe.”

Tony nodded and kept his eyes locked on something Yinsen couldn’t see as he took a deep breath and let it go slowly as Yinsen put in the new miniature arc reactor. Yinsen breathed out a sigh of relief as Tony jumped up from the cot and offered him his hand. “Thank you, Yinsen. Are you ready to break out of this popsicle stand?”

Yinsen couldn’t help but shake his head and smile at the man he was just getting to know. He had known from the papers that he had published over the years that Stark was a brilliant man. He just had a way of solving problems in ways that were so simple and yet so elegant, that he had to admit he had always been a bit envious, if only professionally, but then he recalled their conversation from last night.

“You have a family, Yinsen?”

“I do, a wife, two sons and a daughter, three sisters, and a younger brother. I will see them when I leave here. You, Stark?”

He had watched as Tony looked away for a moment, then glanced up at him almost sadly and shook his head. “Nah.”

“So you are a man who has everything and nothing.”

Tony had simply shrugged and gone back to drinking his tea.

“Pop!” Stephen glanced up from his laptop and found Peter standing in front of his desk, and realized he had spent another day working on a comic book character’s origin story. His publisher would have lost his mind if he had known.

“Sorry. I know you don’t like being disturbed when you are working, but your door was open, and I - are you okay?”

“No, it’s fine, I just lost track of time.”

Peter nodded. “Dad always said you had a terrible relationship with time, especially when the writing was going well.” His face dropped as he watched his father’s face change. “Sorry, it’s just - he always told me stories about you, I think he was worried that you and I - that we wouldn’t - that I would think your writing was more important to you than we were. Do you mind if I talk, if we talk about him? If you’d rather not, I’d understand, it’s just -”

“I’m beginning to forget what his voice sounded like,” Stephen admitted quietly as he made sure the latest chapter was saved, then he closed his laptop and slowly got to his feet. “Are you hungry? I think I forgot to eat today.”

Peter laughed and walked over to him, then threw his arms around him and sighed as Stephen awkwardly returned the hug. “He also said you would go days without if he didn’t put plates of food next to you. There’s a new bakery that just opened up down the street.”

“Do they have pie?”

“Don’t know, but we can go find out.”

“Your dad loved pie.”

“Yeah?” 

“Apple was his favorite, he spent years perfecting his pie crust, but then when you - when we finally got you, he put all his energy into taking care of you. He didn’t really have a family growing up, you became his family, Pete. You were everything to him.”

Peter shook his head against his father’s chest and whispered, “no, Pop, we were his family. You and me. Let’s go see if they have pie before it starts to snow again, yeah?”


	5. “Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”  ― George Bernard Shaw

Peter finished his third piece of apple pie and pushed the plate away, then sat back and studied his father intently for a moment as he played with the remains of vanilla ice cream that had puddled on his plate. “Why do you write?”

Stephen dropped his spoon onto the plate and the clatter brought him out the fugue he had been in since they had sat down. “Why do I write? Why does anyone do anything? No. Sorry, it’s a fair question. Honestly, I write because it’s the only thing I was ever good at, not just good at, it was the one thing I could do better than most people. Sometimes people are good at everything they try to do, like your dad. He could do anything he put his mind to, his pies were so good that he could have opened a chain of bakeries; he could play any instrument he touched, sang like an angel, but once he mastered something, he got bored. He couldn’t imagine doing one thing for the rest of his life. But you probably know that better than I do. Do you want anything else?”

Peter shook his head and waited for him to continue.

“But I wanted to be the best writer. Took me a long time to understand that no one is the _best _at anything, maybe they are for a moment, but then the next day or next week someone else is the newest best. I got published right after college for the first time, I was twenty-two. I wrote one of the first gay romances that became a bestseller at the height of the AIDS crisis, in the time of Reagan. For the next seven years, I churned them out, one or two every year, and your dad - your dad stayed. Some days I still wonder why, and then he wanted a family. He wanted to settle down, have a home, and a child, a baby. We were lucky. We had a friend in college -”__

__“I know. I read the book.” Peter grinned at him then pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket and pushed it across the table. Stephen opened it and gazed at the drawing, then shook his head at his son._ _

__“It’s perfect. When did you -?”_ _

__“During European History - I usually sleep through that class anyway, he’s been teaching for at least a hundred years, doesn’t even care if we snore through him droning on. I thought - the first armor is going to be bulky, he doesn’t have all the high tech equipment he’s used to, had to stitch it together - why didn’t he give up, Pop? I mean, what made him believe he could get away with it? He was hurt, must have believed they had stopped looking for him - “_ _

__Stephen folded the paper again and gave it back to Peter, then went back to drawing circles in the remnants of the ice cream. “I think because he had always found a way out before, he was arrogant enough, I suppose, to believe that the universe wasn’t quite done with him?” He glanced at out the window and muttered, “looks like we’re going to have a white Christmas this year, should we stop and get a tree on the way home?”_ _

__Peter laughed and Stephen shrugged and mumbled, “I know you’re too old -”_ _

__“No, it’s not that - it’s just that you sounded like dad, just then - don’t know why, just sounds like something he would say.”_ _

__Stephen couldn’t help but grin then, as he realized for the first time that Peter had Ben’s laugh, the bright bubble of joy had been one of the reasons he had fallen in love with the willowy blond with the iridescent blue eyes who had nearly run him down with his bicycle so long ago. He put down his spoon gently on the plate, then efficiently bussed their table, and nodded a thank you to the young man at the counter then pulled his gloves from his pocket and drew them on carefully. “Let’s go find a Christmas tree, hmmm?”_ _

__

__Tony placed the finished helmet in front of Yinsen and couldn’t hold back a self-satisfied smirk. “Not the prettiest thing I’ve ever built, but it should do for a few minutes.”_ _

__Yinsen held it in his hands and nodded, then asked him gently, “what do you have to go back for, Stark?”_ _

__“Cheeseburgers, a hot shower, a soft bed and decent coffee? But mostly, because these assholes knew I was coming, someone - someone I know, someone I trusted set me up, Yinsen. So, no matter what I have to do, I’m gonna make it home just so I can make their lives miserable before I kill them.”_ _

__“Revenge -”_ _

__“As you said, Yinsen, I had everything and nothing back home, if my need for revenge is what gets me home in one piece more or less, what does it matter? But honestly, I just want a couple more American cheeseburgers before I die.”_ _

__Yinsen laughed and went back to working on the chest piece of the armor, and hoped it would be ready by the deadline they had been given, six hours before they would return, expecting a complete Jericho missile to be finished. He looked over at the man he now considered a friend and coughed before he whispered, “I wish you a very Merry Christmas, Tony Stark.”_ _

__Tony grinned back at him and replied, “I know you won’t believe me, but this isn’t the worst Christmas I’ve had in my life. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Yinsen, but I’m glad you’re here, if you weren’t, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be.”_ _

__“I’m not so sure about that, Stark. I have the feeling you would have found a way, but I’m glad you’re here too, for what it’s worth.”_ _

__Tony nodded back at him, and saw a faraway look in his eyes. “You’ll get to see your family soon, Yinsen, I promise -”_ _

__“Yes, Stark, I’ll see them very soon. I’m sure of it.”_ _

__

__Stephen and Peter found the biggest tree they could find, and though it didn’t quite smell like the Christmas trees Stephen remembered from his childhood, they carried it half a mile through the lightly falling snow then came to a stop as they found Stephen’s editor waiting for them on the steps of their house, shivering against the wind that had just picked up._ _

__“Stephen, good to see you’re still alive. Peter, nice to see you again.”_ _

__“Phil -”_ _

__“Just came by to warn you in person, Nick’s on the warpath - he needs something by New Year’s Day. Anything -”_ _

__Stephen glanced over at Peter, and raised an eyebrow at him. Peter shrugged his shoulders as much as he could while holding the tree, but nodded in agreement. “New Year’s Day is fine. You want to come up for a drink, Phil?”_ _

__Phil Coulson looked up at the sky, pulled up his collar and shook his head. “Maybe another time, Stephen. I’m going home before I get stuck in the office again for Christmas. Night boys, Merry Christmas.”_ _

__“Pop -”_ _

__“If Tony Stark can blast out of a cave in armor he made of scraps in a couple of weeks, we can damn well finish the story in ten days.”_ _

__Peter hooted with joy, then shivered as a blast of wind blew on his face. “Yeah, Pop, hell yeah, we can.”_ _


	6. “Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”  ― Matsuo Bashô

He heard the helicopters behind him, then directly above him before he actually saw them, but he didn't believe he was going home until he saw Rhodey running towards him as he felt his knees buckle under him, but his friend caught him before he fell over, whispering in his ear, "you ride with me next time, okay? You're okay, Tony, you're going home."

Only then did he finally allow himself to cry for the first time in seventeen years, since the moment he knew his mother was dead, as his best friend lifted him into his arms and didn't let go of him until the base doctors made him put him on the stretcher, and he was whisked away to a bright white room where he mercifully passed out.

_"A bit over the top don't you think?" A voice suggested politely with a yawn. Young, possibly a teenager?_

_"You think so?" A different voice answered, uncertain, older, he thought._

_"It's definitely a different tone than when he's in the cave," the first voice noted._

_"Well, of course it is, he's been rescued, he's going home, so of course -"_

_"Sorry, I like it, it's just going to be hard to draw all that out, but I can do the helicopters, the sand will be a piece of cake." ___

__

__"Rhodey?" Tony whispered into the darkness, and a lamp was turned on, nearly blinding him as the light hit him square in his eyes._ _

__"Sorry, Tone." His friend aimed the lamp towards the floor and took the hand that reached out for him. "Nightmare?"_ _

__"Guess so. Was anyone else in here just now?"_ _

__"Nope, just you and me." Rhodey narrowed his eyes at him and he shook his head._ _

__"Never mind. Tell me today's date?"_ _

__"December 28th, it's Sunday," Rhodey said quietly. "2008."_ _

__"Still 2008."_ _

__"Seems to be, this year is lasting fucking forever." Rhodey offered him a grin, but his eyes were still haunted -_ _

__

___"Haunted? _" The teenager's voice again._ _ __

__

__

____ _ _

____"There. You must have heard that?" He tossed back the sheet and tried to ease his legs over the side of the bed, but Rhodey shook his head at him again._ _ _ _

____"Tony? I didn't hear anything, it's just us here, buddy. Talk to me."_ _ _ _

____"No - it's, I just - when can I go home?"_ _ _ _

____"Soon. They think tomorrow. They are trying to make sure you are stable, and they aren't sure about -" Rhodey looked unsure for the first time since he'd been found walking through the desert as he helped him lean against the pillows again and tucked the sheet back around him._ _ _ _

____"They aren't sure about what?"_ _ _ _

____"The thing in your chest, they aren't even sure how you survived, they've never seen anything like it before."_ _ _ _

____"Course they haven't, because it's the only one ever made, and I made it."_ _ _ _

____Rhodey's eyes popped and he shook his head. "You made it."_ _ _ _

____"Yeah, had a bit of help, but I designed it. It's just a miniature arc reactor -"_ _ _ _

____"Wait a minute. The thing that powers Stark Industries? You put that into your chest? Are you insane? Never mind, I know the answer to that, but seriously?"_ _ _ _

____"You got all the docs to sign NDAs right? How many people saw me, saw it? James?"_ _ _ _

____"Tony. They are military docs. No one will know you were here."_ _ _ _

____"Rhodey, come on, you know better than anyone how things leak to the press."_ _ _ _

____"Damn, I thought you were paranoid before, but -"_ _ _ _

____"Someone set me up, Rhodey, someone who knew where I'd be."_ _ _ _

____"You think, what? That I -"_ _ _ _

____"NO, no, of course not, but they were waiting for me, my humvee was ambushed, James, someone set me up."_ _ _ _

____ _ _

____Stephen rubbed his eyes and glanced over at Peter, who had finally fallen asleep, pencil still in his hand somehow. "Tomorrow, Pete, we'll get him home tomorrow."_ _ _ _

____ _ _

____As the door closed behind Rhodey, who had suddenly needed more coffee and a candy bar, Tony began to understand why soldiers didn't talk about Afghanistan, if they had voices in their heads all the time when they returned home. "Who'd believe them? No one's going to believe me. Why would they, I don't even believe me."_ _ _ _

____ _ _

____Stephen blinked at the words that he must have typed, but he didn't remember doing it, of course he had been editing and reworking the story for four days nonstop, existing on catnaps, strong coffee and toast. He definitely needed a few hours of sleep. "Pete, come on, time for bed."_ _ _ _

____"Five more minutes, Dad. Just five more minutes?"_ _ _ _

____Tony sighed as he picked up the television remote and tried to find something to drown out the voices, but after a few moments he realized they were gone. He tried to remember what they had said as he drifted off to sleep, but instead, his brain decided to focus on the idea that tomorrow, he’d finally be heading home. Home to what, he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to know._ _ _ _


	7. “Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”  ― Werner Heisenberg

Rhodey woke up with a start as he heard the door to Tony’s room open and close with a click. 

“Afternoon, Platypus.” Tony was sitting at the table by the window, already dressed and apparently ready to go home.

“What’s going on? What time is it?”

Tony looked down at where his watch used to be, then up at the clock above the bed he had barely slept in the last four days. “Just signed the discharge papers, was just waiting for your lazy ass to wake up, it’s one in the afternoon.”

Rhodey grinned at him and slowly got up from the bed that had been moved into Tony’s room when it was obvious he would be staying a few days, and Rhodey wouldn’t leave his side. “Well, at least you’re back to normal -”

Tony raised an eyebrow at him, then laid down the pencil he had been using, and closed the legal pad he had borrowed from the night shift nurse. “Normal? Didn’t you always insist that normal was only a setting on the dryer?”

Rhodey watched his friend’s face carefully, and nodded. “Normal for you, I mean. Damn, that sounded wrong. I just meant, a couple of days ago, you thought you were hearing things?”

Peter blinked at the page in front of him, then rubbed his eyes. He knew this scene hadn’t been here before, at least not quite like this. He flipped back a couple pages and sure enough, Tony thought he had been hearing voices that seemed to come from nowhere.

Tony shrugged his shoulders and offered him his best ‘old Tony’ grin. “The doc said it was to be expected. She thinks it was just a night terror, that’s what she called it. Don’t worry. I’m as right as rain. Rain. Damn. I’ve missed rain - the sound of it -”

“And?”

“And, what?”

“What else have you missed?”

“Hmm…” Tony closed his eyes and thought for a moment. What had he missed most over the last few months? “The ocean, well, at least the smell of it. I couldn’t remember it after a few weeks. I’ve spent most of my life near the ocean, and I couldn’t remember what it smelled like, Rhodes. And… cheeseburgers.”

“Cheeseburgers?” Rhodey rolled his eyes at his friend and shook his head as he got to his feet. “Of everything you could have -”

“When we land - cheeseburgers, like half a dozen? Please?”

All he could do was nod and smile at him, even though he knew something was still very wrong with his friend, no matter what he said. He couldn’t remember a single time when Tony Stark had said please or -

“Have I thanked you yet?”

He had to sit back down before he fell down, and he bit his lip as he shook his head again, before he said or did something that would embarrass them both.

“Thank you for finding me, Platypus. Can we go home now?”

“Yeah, Tone.” He stood up again, then slipped into his shoes and tied the laces, grabbed the jacket of his uniform from the closet and brushed a few invisible wrinkles away, as he tried to catch his breath. Once he recovered, he walked over to Tony and gingerly helped him up from the chair. “You knew I was searching for you the whole time you were gone, right? I never gave up, you know that, don’t you?”

Tony nodded as James wrapped his arms around him, then swore to himself as he felt the tears stream down his cheeks again as he mumbled into Rhodey’s badly crinkled shirt. “Yeah, Rhodes. I always knew you were trying to find me. I knew you wouldn’t give up on me.”

Peter sighed as he pushed away from the table and was only slightly surprised that his own face was wet with tears, it was a new normal for him these last few days. He had read parts of most of his father’s books, but none of them had affected him in the way this story did. He knew it was mostly because they were working on it together, it was their story, but he had the sense that this story was truer than anything he had ever read before. He wished his Dad could be there with them, to see these characters come to life, but he knew wishes were for children, and he hadn’t felt like a child since the day his father left for the store and didn’t come home.

“I miss you, Dad.” He got up from the chair, and walked over to the window where the snow continued to fall. Three feet had fallen since the day they visited the bakery, and gave no sign of letting up anytime soon. After a moment, he wiped his eyes on his sleeve, then went into the kitchen to make the first pot of coffee of the day.

Tony shivered and froze suddenly, as they slowly made their way down the hallway. He had sworn stubbornly that he wouldn’t get into the wheelchair until the last possible moment. Rhodey stopped, and waited, knowing not to ask him if he was okay. He knew it would be a long time before his friend was anything close to okay.

“It’s nothing, Sour Patch. Just a little tired, maybe that wheelchair isn’t such a bad idea.”

Rhodey helped him into the chair, then pushed him down the hallway in silence, and out into the brightness of a rare sunny day. Yet his friend was still shivering as he settled him into the car that waited to take them to the airport.

“Tony.”

“I’m fine, Rhodes.” He sighed and offered him half of an exhausted smirk. “I’ll be fine.” He turned towards the window, and closed his eyes, then finally fell asleep.


	8. “Books were safer than other people anyway.”  ― Neil Gaiman

He knew he needed to sleep. In the past he’d always found sleep to be boring, but these days, it wasn’t. When the nightmares came to visit, it was worse than being back in the cave, and the voices left him during the rare hours that he did manage to sleep without dreaming. Oddly enough, he found he missed them. He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration, and growled out, “Jarvis.”

“Sir?”

“Ready to begin a new project?”

“Always, sir. Shall we open a new file on the Stark server?”

Tony brought up the rough image of the original armor and glared at it for a moment, before he began to pull it apart. “No. Not sure who I can trust at the moment.” He spent a brief moment considering why he hadn’t told Rhodey how he had escaped, and then he knew precisely why he hadn’t told him, because he was still afraid he was losing his mind. He had even been uncertain that Yinsen had been in the cave with him, until he ran a search on him, and found that they had indeed been at the same conference in Bern in 1999, and that his village, Gulmira, had been taken over by a small but powerful group of terrorists, well funded by someone. He was missing and presumed dead. “At least he was real,” he muttered to himself, as he began to redesign the armor into something sleek and more aerodynamic.

“Who was real, sir?” Jarvis asked.

“Hmm?”

“You said, “at least he was real.”

Tony sighed, but was relieved he had Jarvis to talk to. Like the man the AI had been based on, he, ‘it’ had ‘learned’ to anticipate his every need as far as his work was concerned, of course ‘learned’ wasn’t quite the correct term, but he had spent months before he left on the trip to Afghanistan programming it to interpret any change in his voice, or mood and respond accordingly. He hoped Jarvis could help him understand the voices he was hearing, at least determine if they were ‘real’, whatever real meant, or if - he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know what the alternative could be.

“Just a man I knew, Jarvis. A friend.”

“A friend.”

Tony glared up at the ceiling and winced as the harsh laugh that escaped hurt his chest, then went back to streamlining the body of the armor. “Is it so surprising that I could have a friend?”

“Do you wish me to answer that question, sir?”

“No, Jarvis, I do not.”

“Very good, sir.”

_Peter appeared at the doorway of his office, and knocked lightly on the door, then waited for him to look up from his laptop._

_“Hmm?”_

_“Don’t you think we should have a villain?”_

_“Villain?”_

_“There’s always a reason the hero becomes a hero, usually it’s because of the ‘bad guy,’ you don’t need a hero if there isn’t a bad guy.”_

_“Right. What are your thoughts?”_

_“Well, there were obviously bad guys in Afghanistan, but you, we already have him suspecting he was set up, so I think he should figure out who set him up -” ___

__

__“Hell.” Tony covered his ears and dropped into his chair, then stared into his untouched coffee and gave a vague thought to how long it had been sitting there._ _

__“Sir?”_ _

__“It’s nothing. How long have I been awake, Jarvis?”_ _

__“According to my calculations, you have been awake for nearly seventy-two hours, may I suggest -”_ _

__“Yes, yes, I know -”_ _

__“May I suggest an audio book? I do recall that according to some research, familiar stories spoken out loud, may be conducive to -”_ _

__Tony yawned, then chuckled. “A bedtime story, Jarvis? Okay, while I take a catnap, I want you to consider who of my most intimate associates would wish to see me dead?”_ _

__“Only your intimate associates, sir?”_ _

__“When did I give you a sense of humor, Jarvis?” He got up from his chair and slowly eased himself onto the couch. Now weeks since his return, he still found the only way he could sleep was on his back on the couch in his workshop, as the king sized bed upstairs was too big and far too soft. He felt suffocated by the pillows and down blankets and the scent of the ocean that he had missed was too much for him. “Put on -”_ _

__“‘Lost and Found,’ by S. Strange?”_ _

__“His best one, but then first novels usually are.” Tony groaned as he tried to get comfortable, then closed his eyes and tried to focus on the words that he knew by heart before he drifted off to sleep._ _

__

__“For years after, he would wonder if there were elements in the universe that conspired just so they would meet. If the weather had been less than perfect, if he hadn’t had the flat tire that nearly made him late -”_ _

__“The voice, Jarvis. It’s his voice -” Tony whispered._ _

__“Whose voice, sir?” Jarvis asked, but its scanners told it that Tony was already asleep._ _


	9. “It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime...”  ― Khaled Hosseini

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And of course we couldn't have Tony without Pepper..

Where Stephen had once been at a loss for words, there were now pages and pages of a story with no end in sight. Thousands of words focused on one man, a deeply flawed human being who spent years trying to find a way to save the world, mostly as penitence for what he and his father had created, thinking they were protecting the world, instead of slowly destroying it. 

Eventually he tried to assemble a team of people like himself when he understood that it was more than he could do on his own, but it had failed - for the simple reason that they had all the normal human failings of average people. Unfortunately, in superheroes, the failings, like the better aspects of their natures, were more than slightly exaggerated and the experiment had failed badly, and he found he was on his own again...

Stephen stood at the window with his second cup of coffee of the day, and blew out a sigh of relief as it finally registered that the blizzard had at last come to an end overnight, even the wild winds had stopped. He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d seen a storm of such extreme proportions. Perhaps there had been one in his childhood, but everything seemed bigger back then. He shook his head and watched as the clean up was now underway, and shrugged. At least if Nick somehow made it from his place in Connecticut on New Year’s Day, he’d have something to show him, no, they’d have something to show him, this story was more Peter’s than his, and if Nick tried to persuade him to use another artist or find a loophole somehow -

“Pop?”

He turned at Peter’s voice and nearly gasped at the dark circles under Peter’s eyes and wondered when he last slept longer than an hour. “Did you sleep last night?”

Peter shook his head and walked over to him and dropped his sketchbook on Stephen’s desk. “What are we going to do with him?”

“What do you mean?” Stephen guessed at what he meant, but wasn’t ready to deal with the question yet. Peter knew more about comic books than he would ever be able to understand even if he spent the next twenty years trying to play catch up. Peter knew how often iconic characters were killed off and brought back to life in different universes, depending on the whims of the publishers, and the public at large. What they were attempting to do was unheard of these days, to create a new superhero from scratch, especially as flawed and politically outspoken as Tony was, as currently written, it could be a disaster, dead in the water before it even it hit the newsstands -

“I know you’ve been writing ahead, you haven’t stopped writing since the day you started working on him. I’m still drawing out his first design, working out the scene where he crashes over and over again in the boots, it’s really funny stuff, Pop. I like him, I really like him - and I know, I mean, even you know - this might not get to a first printing, or if it does - he’s different, and I mean that in a good way. I’m just saying, it’s been a long time since you had a book out, and people might flip out when they know it’s you.”

Stephen blinked at him for a moment, then laughed as he brushed a long curl from his son’s eyes. “Looks like the snow has finally stopped, maybe we can go for a walk and see if Andrew has some free time, it’s been awhile since you had a haircut.”

“Pop -”

“It’s just a couple of blocks. To be honest, my writing has been dead for years, Pete, even before the words stopped flowing. I should’ve stopped writing after the first one, the rest I did because I could, made a good living at it, and for a long time I didn’t know what I would do if I didn’t write -”

Ben stood silently behind him then paused before he turned on the clippers. “Are you sure? I know sometimes you make decisions when you’re stuck and then regret -”

Stephen closed his eyes and sighed as he felt Ben’s fingers tug lightly on a handful of curls. “I’m - I’m sure, the curls will grow back, they always do.” He opened his eyes to find Ben watching their reflections in the mirror and saw the bright blue light sparkle back at him. He pressed a kiss to his shoulder, then turned on the clippers and the curls drifted down to the floor like so much…

“...snow?”

“Sorry?”

“I just asked if you were sure you wanted to go out in all that snow. I know it’s stopped snowing, but the sidewalks are going to be a mess.”

“You’re right, I just thought we could use a break, I could use some air.”

“Are you hungry?” Peter asked quietly, “I could eat a -”

“I love you, Pete.”

Peter drew in a sharp breath and mumbled, “horse. Yeah, me too, Pop. Love you, too. You know what sounds good right now?”

“Cheeseburgers?”

“Yeah. Cheeseburgers. That hole in the wall place is always open - and their -”

“Cheese fries.”

“Come on, Pop. Let’s go.”

“Heya, Pep.”

“Tony Stark.” Professor Virginia Potts got up from her desk in her office at Stanford University and crossed her arms at him, then saw the look in his dark brown eyes, and the even darker circles under them and opened her arms for him to walk into. “Hey, bud.” She held him as he shook in her arms, then drew back and laid her fingers over his chest. “What the hell happened to you in Afghanistan, sweetie?”

“Got time for dinner? I can tell you all about it.”

“You drove over five hours on the off-chance that Lizzie was out of town to see if I’d have dinner with you?” She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him and he couldn’t help but blush.

“No,” he admitted quietly. “I called Lizzie this morning and she told me where I could find you, and that she thought you needed some time away from the drivel of angst-ridden twenty-somethings. I asked her to keep it a surprise.”

“Well, I am surprised that you waited all this time before you came to see me.” She sniffed and turned away from him in mock hurt. “You’ve been home -?”

“Four months, two weeks, 6 days…”

“But who’s counting, hmm?” She studied the face she had known since childhood, and shook her head, as she took him in her arms again carefully and whispered at his ear, “it’s not just what happened to you when you were held, is it?”

He bit his lip and shook his head at her, then muttered, “you did research on Strange, for your MFA-”

“Lost and Found.”

“Yeah, thing is - there are times when I hear him and someone younger in my head, like they are having a conversation in the room, or somewhere nearby, but above me - and they are talking about me, I know it sounds crazy, and I know I've tried a few substances over the years, but I swear, Pep, it’s him. I have an audio recording of him reading Lost and Found and it’s the same voice, it’s a little different because he’s older now, but -”

“When did it start, the voices?”

“When I woke up in the hospital after Rhodey found me wandering in the desert -”

“What does it sound like?”

He looked at her for a long moment, then sighed and turned his eyes away. “Sometimes it’s the two of them discussing something completely random, or just a feeling that I’m, god - it’s nuts, Pep, it’s like I’m experiencing what they are feeling with them, but mostly, it sounds like they are, well, you know -”

“No, tell me, Tones.” Pepper touched his face lightly, but just enough so he would face her again, and looked him steadily in the eyes until he nodded and took a breath.

“Narrating my life.”


	10. “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”  ― Horace Walpole

The second he took in a deep breath of the chilled December air, he wished he was back at his desk, safely ensconced in the fictional world he was still creating even as he focused on unfurling the scarf from his neck and wrapped it neatly around Peter’s, then shoved his gloved hands into his pockets and glared up at the pale grey sky.

“We don’t have to, Pop.”

“No, it’s fine, I’m just, still getting used to feeling my way around -”

“ - without him. Yeah, I know. You’d think after two years it would be easier.”

Stephen turned his eyes to his son, and finally recognized that he was no longer a child, but nearly a young man. His voice had changed a couple of years ago, but he hadn’t taken note of it, as lost as he was in his attempts to avoid feeling the grief he should have dealt with back then, but grief had its own timetable. His eyes carried a deep hurt, and yet the kindness in them softened the pain. He wanted to tell him all the things he should have said then, but he knew the time had passed and they just had to find their footing in the present. He knew Peter was just making conversation, trying to fill the silence, and he wished he had something to offer him, but he deserved better than some trite platitude, so he shrugged and replied carefully, “I don’t know that it will ever get easier, Pete. One day, it will just be less, or at least, I don’t know, different, until it doesn’t hurt so much to breathe anymore.”

“You think so?” Peter asked quietly.

“I hope so.” Stephen smiled gently at him, then swore as the snow began again. “Come on, Pete, race you there -” He laughed as he slid on the ice for a few feet, but didn’t fall, and he couldn’t help but glance upward as he heard Peter let out a real howl of laughter for the first time in months. Somehow they made it to the restaurant without much damage to find the owner already making their regular orders as they shook the snow from their hair and dropped onto the well-worn blue stools.

“Joey.”

“Stevie. Pete. Good to see you boys, been a while. Want me to switch to the news?”

“No, the game’s fine. Who’s playing?”

“Giants and the Skins, good thing they’re away this week.”

Stephen rolled his eyes but focused on the screen, and tried to finally comprehend what Ben had loved about the game so much. Peter started chatting with Joey about stats and injuries as an overflowing plate of cheese fries was placed between them and he was struck by an overwhelming feeling that something was going to change soon. 

He wasn’t sure what precisely, but as he laid his hand over his chest, he knew something had loosened, just the tiniest bit, and he felt as though he was finally beginning to thaw out from the deep freeze he had buried himself in for so long now. “Just need to finish the story,” he mumbled to himself as he picked up a fry and cringed as Manning was taken down for another loss.

Pepper’s face didn’t change and she waited for him to go on.

“It’s like I’m not in control anymore, it’s as if -”

“You’re a character in their story.”

Tony shook his head and muttered, “I am their story. They know me, inside and out, everything, every single thing, Pep. I’m a puppet, like one of those marionette things where someone is pulling the strings -” she felt him begin to tremble in her arms and she helped him to sit in her chair, then moved to stand in front of him.

“Just breathe, take a breath, Tony. I’m right here, breathe, just take your time.” 

“The thing is, there are times when I can’t hear them, and -” He took a shuddering breath in, then grabbed her hand as he slowly released it again. “I actually miss them. Rhodey - he thought I was hallucinating or something. Pep. I need to find them, Stephen and Peter. I used to be able to think my way out of anything, but now, even my thoughts, they aren’t mine, I mean, they are, but they aren’t. I know I’m not making any sense -”

His eyes met hers and she smiled carefully at him, as she studied his face again. He wasn’t the same man she had dinner with a week before the Afghanistan trip, how could he be? But - she blinked at him, then let go of his hand and opened her laptop, and after a minute of efficient searching, moved out of his way so he could read the article she had found.

“Ben Parker, long time partner to reclusive best-selling author, Stephen Strange, dies in car crash -”

Tony scanned the obituary quickly and rubbed his hands through his hair. “It was two years ago - the day I regained consciousness in the hospital - the day I started hearing them, it was exactly two years since his death. Peter is their son. He’s only fifteen…” 

He pulled out his phone and showed her the full size hologram of his completed design for the new suit of armor he had finished a day earlier. “That, well, low tech versions of that - and this,” he tapped on his chest, and continued slowly, “is how I got out of the cave in Afghanistan. I flew, well, more blasted out of there, Pep, just far enough to escape, then walked through the desert for a few days until Rhodey found me. Rhodey doesn’t know how, I haven’t told him yet. The kid, Peter, it’s his design, I saw it, heard it, whatever, in my head. I was going to have Jarvis fabricate it, but the next thing I knew, I was halfway here to you. Pep. If I had built that - and it worked - no, I know it works. I know because, he - Stephen, he’s nearly finished the story, my story.” 

Pepper shook her head, confused for the first time since he’d arrived. “Back up, sweetie, if you had built it, what would you have done with it?”

Tony cleared his throat then shook his head as he opened the bottom right hand drawer of her desk, and pulled out the bottle of single malt he always sent for her birthday, and two glasses. He poured them each a healthy double, then returned the bottle to the drawer. He picked up his glass then swirled the drink in his hand before he tossed it back, and snorted as he slowly placed the glass on the desk. “I was going to - I’m supposed to - the night of the firefighter’s gala - I leave the party early, put on that armor and I fly to Gulmira, in order to avenge the deaths of my friend and his family, by killing the terrorists who took me captive.”

Pepper grabbed her drink and took a small sip, then as her fingers wrapped around the glass tightly, narrowed her eyes at him and muttered, “say what, now?”

“I am supposed to - he, they, think I can save the universe, Pepper, they think -”

“Tony?”

“I am Iron Man,” he pronounced in a commanding voice she had never heard in the years she had known him, and she froze as she came to the realization that he was serious, but more than that, she knew if given a chance, he would find a way to do it, or die trying.

“Thanks, Joey,” Stephen said, as he paid the bill. “Sorry about your Giants.”

“They’ll be back. Ben always said - damn, I’m sorry, Stevie.”

“No, it’s okay, Joe. Tell me.”

“Ben always said when they got their heads -” he looked over at Peter and hesitated, but Peter finished the thought for him as he shrugged into his coat and zipped it up. “If they ever get their heads out of their asses, draft a decent quarterback and build a real defensive line, they’ll be fine.”

Stephen laughed as Peter nailed Ben’s voice perfectly, even the slightly crazed glint in his eye was exactly the same. He shook his head as he once more draped his scarf around Peter’s neck, and ruffled his hair. “Night, Joey, we’ll be back sooner next time.”

“Promises, promises,” Joey muttered as he waved them out the door and switched over to CNN, then shook his head at the goings on in the world and flipped to the entertainment channel.

“Tony Stark hasn’t been seen in public since his rather bizarre press conference nearly five months ago. There is talk that he could be suffering from PTSD, and hasn’t been out of bed for weeks. His people have issued no comment on the rumors as yet. Whatever the truth is, no one expects him to show up here at the gala tonight…”


	11. “It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.” - William Faulkner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long chapter... I'm playing with time in this story, hopefully it will make sense eventually, maybe.

Stephen woke with a start to the sound of the doorbell. The last time someone had appeared at their door without prior arrangement - he shook his head and cleared that night from his mind as he tried to gather his thoughts when the doorbell was pressed again. He looked at his watch and blinked furiously at it. New Year’s Day? How - hell. He got up from his chair and walked into the kitchen to find Peter standing in the kitchen with his editor.

“Phil?”

“Stephen. Nick is still snowbound, so he asked me to stop by in his place. Peter was about to make some coffee and he tells me you both have something to show me?”

“Yes, we do. I have to warn you, it’s a bit different than -”

“It’s a comic book,” Peter blurted out, then closed his mouth as he began to measure out the scoops of coffee.

“A comic book?” Phil asked with a twinkle in his eye. “You mean -”

“It’s an origin story, if you know -”

“Of course I know what an origin story is, Stephen, I grew up in the 50s. Wait. You’re telling me you created a new comic book - you?”

“It was Peter’s idea, I just -”

Peter switched on the coffee maker, then turned around and cleared his throat. “Mr. Coulson -”

“Peter, since when have you called me ‘Mr. Coulson’?”

“Phil, I think it’s better if you just see it, it’s still rough - but if you see the sketches -”

Coulson smiled at the teenager and nodded at him, “go get them.”

Peter grinned at Stephen, then fairly flew from the room, and Coulson crossed his arms at Stephen and waited patiently.

“It’s his story, Phil. If you have to put my name on it to get it past Fury, fine, but, this is his book, I just filled in the blanks.”

“Just be honest with me, Stephen, is it any good?”

“Yeah, Phil. It’s fucking brilliant.”

“Pep - It’s me. I did it. Can’t talk right now. Love you.”

Pepper briefly considered throwing her phone, but thought her co-workers who were already watching her cautiously as she growled at the text message, might find it a bit out of character, so she did the only thing that made sense to her at that moment.

“Rhodey -”

“Pepper?”

“I don’t have time to explain, but you need to call Tony ASAP, just please? I have class in three minutes. Do what you can to - hell, I don’t even know, James. I gotta go -”

“Pep- ?”

“Tony.”

“Rhodey?”

“What’s that noise?”

“What noise?”

“Tony. Pepper just called me -”

“Of course she did.”

“What are you doing?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, I still don’t believe me, but this is something I need to do.”

“Just tell me where - and I’ll -”

“I’m on my way to New York, Rhodey.”

“New York? Why New York?”

“I have to go, I’ll tell you about it later or not…”

“Tony?”

The phone line went dead.

“I have to run, I’m already late for school, Phil, but here are the first ten pages that are mostly finished. The rest are sketched out... “ Peter swore internally, but he just had to get out of the house before he imploded or something worse. He grabbed his coat, kissed Stephen’s cheek, then bolted out the door.

“He does know it’s New Year’s Day, right?” Phil laughed, then began to read the first page. Stephen watched his face and sighed. He knew that face -

“Stephen. You haven’t started watching the news again, have you?”

“Of course not, why would I do that?”

“And you aren’t on social media -”

“Phil. Spit it out.”

“It’s better to show you, I think.” Phil pulled out his phone and tapped on it for a few seconds, then placed it on the kitchen counter.

“Most of this,” he said, pointing with a trembling finger to the sketch book that Peter had used to draw out the finished pages as he spoke in a mumbled hush, “in fact, everything in the first three pages isn't fiction at all. Tony Stark is very real, and very much alive.”

“What?” Stephen picked up the phone, then dropped into a chair as he watched, then rewatched the press conference from earlier in the year, where the billionaire designer and manufacturer of most of the weapons that were used in the Middle East declared that he would no longer be in the business of ‘aiding and abetting the enemies of peace by building weapons of mass destruction.'” They were the exact words he had written for his fictional Tony Stark, just a few days earlier.

“Stephen.”

“Phil. I had no idea.”

“Tell me.”

“Peter woke up one morning I guess it was a little over a week ago now. It was two years after -”

Phil nodded.

“To the day. He’d had a dream, of a man in a metal suit. Wait. Let me get you the note that he wrote me.” Stephen disappeared from the kitchen and returned with the original drawing with the note still attached, safely stored in a plastic folder:

Pop -

Had a dream last night, for once it wasn’t a nightmare about what happened to Dad. It was about a superhero, a bit like the ones Dad and I would read about in the comics - I know it seems kinda childish, but he seemed so real, I had to draw it out before I forgot him. He’s not a good guy at the beginning, he’s pretty much a spoiled, rich inventor, who designs and sells weapons, but then he gets captured, and he escapes by making a suit out of the weapons that the bad guys had got their hands on, he gets home and decides to become a superhero, even though he’s just a guy in a suit of armor, and instead of hiding his identity like all the other guys decides to tell everyone who he is - crazy. But he seemed so real, I dunno. I’m sorry about this morning. I don’t blame you for anything, I just really miss Dad a lot, and I sometimes wonder if you do. Sorry. Never mind. I have band practice after school. See you at dinner.

\- Peter

Phil blinked at the note and sat down next to Stephen. “This -”

“- is crazy,” Stephen whispered. “This guy, this man Peter dreamed up, actually exists?”

“He does. He lives in California. There were rumors about how he escaped, and until the other night, no one had seen him in public since that press conference. No one knows what he’s been doing, but he got to his big fundraiser that he’s hosted for the last few years, talked to a reporter, then bolted again. His father was Howard Stark, you know - he worked on the Manhattan project? He and his wife died in a car crash when Tony was twenty-one -”

“How do you know all this?” Stephen asked quietly as he replayed the press conference one more time, then glanced up at Phil and waited.

“I watch the news, like most normal people, Stephen, but there was something about his story that intrigued me, so I did a little background research on him. He escaped after being held and tortured for three months. He managed to get out of a terrorist group’s cave, where they had hidden out unknown for years, if he hadn’t found a way out -”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that maybe, just maybe this guy built a suit of armor out of a bunch of scraps and blasted out of that cave. Maybe he has an unknown energy source running his heart now - but there’s been no evidence of a metal man in Afghanistan avenging his friend’s death -”

Stephen shook his head. “There wouldn’t be, would there? You think seven years after 9/11, if a civilian builds a flying armor and single-handed dismantles a terrorist cell, that they are going to let the press or anyone else know? It’s just a story, Phil, a story my kid and I wrote together, in less than ten days."

He paused, then said evenly, "superheroes don’t exist in the real world, Phil. Besides, people don’t change that much. They just don’t. A guy who has spent his adult life selling weapons that could end the world doesn’t just become Superman even after - after - all this really happened to him?” Stephen picked up the comic book and thumbed through the nearly completed drawings.

“Well, you can tell from the press conference yourself. That’s a man looking for absolution in the worst way, and he ain’t Catholic. He’s definitely still injured, and you can hear it if you listen, he has a hard time catching his breath - even if he doesn’t have this, what’d you call it, ‘arc reactor thingamabob’ in his chest, he definitely has some health issues going on. After they hustled him out of the room, they made a general statement about his need for time to recover, then they tossed everyone out. Then nothing til last night - no one expected him to show, but he appeared an hour after it began, then left just as abruptly, and no one’s saying a word today.”

“So - ?”

“So what happens next, Stephen? How does his story end? Pete got his love of comics and heroes from Ben, I know that. But you know how stories go, there’s always an ending to every story, and I know how yours have always ended in the past, how does this one end?”

Stephen stared at him and shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know yet, Phil. I can’t stop writing, and he just won’t - he won’t stop trying to save the world. I haven’t really slept since Christmas, when I do, I dream of him. This time - you know the whole, ‘show me a hero -”

“‘...and I’ll write you a tragedy’ bit?”

“I really want to write a happy ending for once, but I think - honestly, I think it’s up to him. Give me another couple of days. Tell Nick -”

“I’ll tell Nick you were busy working, couldn’t see me. Give him an ending, Stephen. Let me know when the two of you figure it out.” Phil walked to the door and picked up his coat.

“Which two?’ Stephen asked, relieved, yet confused by his editor’s easy acceptance of what he had just told him. He still wasn’t sure that he believed what had happened to him over the last few days, what was still happening to all of them, it seemed.

“You and Stark, of course. See you around, kiddo. And let Pete know I’ll see if there’s anyone who wants to take a chance on a new character with some changes to protect the innocent, or not so innocent, hmm? He’s good, Stephen, really good.”

“Thanks, Phil.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Stephen, the endings are always the hardest part for you. This one may mean more than just a review in the Times. Just really think before you leap, hmm?” Phil shook his head at his author and knew he had already been forgotten, then walked out the door, and quietly closed it behind him.

Stephen mumbled, ‘yeah, right,’ but had stopped listening to his editor, when he looked at the phone in his hand and saw an old photo of Stark and Virginia Potts together. “I know you, why do I know you?” Before he could talk himself out of it, he did a quick search for her online, then dialed a number.

“Professor Potts? Stephen Strange, do you have time to talk?”

Peter hung up his jacket and tugged off his boots to dry by the door, and was on his way to raid the fridge when the doorbell rang for the second time that day.

“Grand Central around here to -” his words faltered as he swung open the door to see a man in a full suit of armor remove a gold mask from his face.

“Peter Parker?”

“Uhm, yeah, that’s me, I’m, uhm, Peter.”

“Good to finally put a face to the voice, kid. I’m Tony Stark.”


	12. “Take your broken heart, make it into art.”  ― Carrie Fisher

He wasn't sure when it happened, but it had. The character who had finally dragged him from the worst case of - no, it wasn't writer's block, he finally had to admit, and not even simply the grief he hadn't allowed himself to acknowledge, but it was the fear that he would never fall in love again - he was real. How he had conjured him up, he couldn't even begin to work it out into something that made sense. As he ended the call to California, he heard the doorbell again and waited for a moment, then got to his feet, and knew life as he had known it was about to be shattered, one way or another.

“Mr. Strange?” Pepper nearly dropped her phone, but held on to it. “Yes, of course I remember you - how -”

“I’m fine, well, I’m trying to - I understand you know Tony Stark.”

“Yes.”

“Since when? I mean, how long have you known him? I’m sorry, I know this may sound bizarre, but, it seems my son and I have spent the last few days writing about him, completely by - I don’t believe in coincidences, but -”

“I think he was on his way to see you. I hope he is - the alternative -”

“Afghanistan,” he whispered, just loudly enough for her to hear.

“Yes. I’m afraid - he’s - I’ve known him since childhood, he’s a year older than me, but he was smaller and smarter than everyone else, and of course let people know it, and he knew early on that he was gay - all of it made him a target, and I -

“You protected him.” 

“We’re both only children, he’s my family, Mr. Strange. If you can, I know it may be presumptuous for me to ask this of you, I know how you work, from our conversations years ago, but if there is anything you can do? He’s a grown man now, and can take care of himself, sort of, but Afghanistan - it -”

“Changed him?”

“He’s not the same man he was, and he - I think he believes because of who he is, that he owes the world something, and I just worry -”

At that moment, he knew how the story was going to end. 

“Don’t worry, Professor Potts. I’ll do my best, I promise.”

“Thank you, Mr. Strange, if you see him -?”

“I’ll make sure he calls you.”

He got to his feet slowly, and made himself walk into the kitchen to make coffee.

“Pop?”

“Pete?”

“There’s - hmm. He’s - him, Tony Stark - Pop - is there something I should know?”

Stephen added water to the coffee maker and turned it on, then turned to face his son and nodded. “I’ll try to explain it to you later, once I understand it. Where is he?”

“Living room. He’s just - well, him-”

“Breathe, Pete, it will be okay, I promise.” He ruffled his hair, then walked into the living room.

“Mr. Stark? I’m -”

“Stephen Strange, I know exactly who you are. Your first book changed my life, the others -”

“I should have stopped after the first one.”

Tony raised an eyebrow at him in surprise, but nodded. “Look, I don’t know why I’m here, honestly. I mean, I do - I don’t know how - we - us - just give me a second?”

Stephen could only nod as Tony pressed a button and he stepped out of the armor. “Your kid Pete designs a mean suit of armor, just didn’t add an easy way out. Took me a while to work it out, I’m sure on later versions, he would have come up with something better -”

Peter cleared his throat and said, “I was thinking nanotech, someday -?”

Tony blinked at him then nodded as he ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah, I can see how that would have some advantages, you looking for a job, kid?”

“I’m only -”

“I know, you’re only fifteen. Built my first computer from scratch when I was eight. Sorry. I’m not here to show off. I had to build it, I couldn’t not, not just because you wrote it that way, but because I’m who I am, but you gave me an out - in one of your drafts, I guess, you let me decide. And I need to know why. It’s like those choose your own adventure stories - did you ever read those?”

Stephen nodded. 

“In the cave - no one knows this except you - there was someone I couldn’t save, and he told me not to waste my life, those were his last words to me, and he had saved my life. He knew who I was, knew me for what I had been, and saved me anyway, then gave me enough time to escape. How do I repay that except to avenge him?”

“There are other ways, Tony. I think you should know, I spoke to Professor Potts right before you showed up here, when I realized you weren’t just a figment of my imagination, not just a voice I’d hear -”

“You heard me too?” Tony asked in a rough hush as he slowly lowered himself into a chair. “Sorry, not used to the flying thing - Pepper - I should let her know - damn. I came here because -”

“Don’t go to Afghanistan,” Peter whispered, still standing in the doorway.

“What?” Tony and Stephen said together as they turned to look at him.

“You were just supposed to be a superhero, the best one ever, mostly because -”

“I didn’t have any super powers?”

“Right. You were a hero just because you never gave up, you always found a way out, because you were smarter than everyone else. But you were also just a human being, like -”

“Your dad?” Tony asked quietly.

Peter nodded, then finally met Tony’s eyes. “You were just meant to be a story. I didn’t mean -”

“Pete. Kiddo. You saved me. You didn’t put me in that cave. I didn’t start hearing you and your father until I got out, and was safe. I guess it was my way of dealing, or not dealing with what had happened to me. There were times when I couldn’t hear you, guess when you were sleeping, or not writing, and oddly enough, I missed you. The rest of the time the two of you wouldn’t shut up.”

Stephen laughed, and Tony grinned up at him. “Hazards of being a writer, I guess?”

“Something like that,” Stephen smiled back at him, and couldn’t help but study the dark brown eyes for a long moment, so different than Ben’s, everything about him was - “sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”

“No, it’s okay...” His voice trailed off and Stephen could see how much pain he was still in, even months after he had been back, and he wanted to be able to say or do something -

While he was frozen in place, Peter walked over to where Tony was struggling to get up from the depths of the chair, and offered him a hand, then cleared his throat and in his naturally kind way asked him, “are you hungry? We know this place - it’s always open, even on holidays, he makes the best -.”

“Cheeseburgers?” Tony laughed and the warmth in his dark eyes seemed to fill the room, and Stephen found it difficult to breathe. He blinked and Tony was standing there in front of him, his hand resting lightly on his arm, steadying him somehow.

Stephen searched Tony’s eyes and finally found his voice after what felt like days. “Please, stay.”

“Is this just part of the story, Strange?” Tony asked, the touch of heat in his voice made Stephen shiver.

He shook his head and mumbled, “straying off script, a bit.”

“I’ll meet you two over there, I’ll get Joey to make the regular,” Peter called out from the front door, then the door closed with a bang and they were alone. Stephen studied the face he knew so well, and without thinking, brought a hand up and laid it gently along Tony’s strong jaw. They both froze for a moment, then Tony leaned into his touch and time seemed to stop. For that moment, there was no grief, no pain, there was nothing else in the world but the two of them, and as Tony leaned against Stephen’s chest and breathed out a sigh of relief, they both knew he was finally home.

“Cheeseburgers?” Stephen whispered into his hair.

“Cheeseburgers.”


	13. “I'll tell you a secret. Old storytellers never die. They disappear into their own story.” - Vera Nazarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit of an epilogue...

Tony rubbed his eyes as he walked into the kitchen to find Peter at the table, staring into the distance, the ubiquitous sketchpad and pencil nowhere to be seen.

“Pete?”

“Hey, Tony. Sorry if I woke you. Couldn’t sleep.”

“What’s got you worried?”

“I don’t know about the comic book. I mean, I’m excited about it, but -”

“But?”

“I get to do this great fun thing because of what happened to you. I know I didn’t make it happen, but -”

“You know what?”

“What?”

“The world needs a hero at the moment, even if it’s just in a comic book, and not real life. You can give it to them, and I’ll be around to help, if you need it.”

Peter glanced up at him shyly and smiled. “Yeah?”

“I have to deal with stuff back in my old life, but I can do most of that from here, if that’s okay with you?”

“Why does it matter what I think?” Peter asked quietly.

“Why? If it bothered you - about me and your father - it matters to me, you are his family, Pete, and I know things sort of happened kind of fast and weirdly. What I mean to say -”

“You make him happy. He was - before you, before the story, it was like, I don’t know, when Dad died, it’s like he, part of him died with him, but when he started writing you - I mean it, you know what I mean, he started really living again. Besides, I like you.”

“Yeah?” Tony raised a surprised eyebrow at him.

“You get it. I mean, you understand what it’s like to have all these ideas going in my head all the time. School is okay - I have a couple of friends, but most of the kids think I’m a nerd, but I come back home, and you’re here, and you let me talk about what I’m really thinking about, or you know to leave me alone because you can tell I’m working something out. And Pop’s happy. I didn’t think I’d ever see him really happy ever again. So, yeah, I wouldn’t mind if you stuck around here for awhile.”

“Thanks, kiddo.” Tony ruffled his hair, and whispered, “don’t stay up too late, yeah?”

“I won’t.”

“Tony?”

“Yeah.” He hung his robe on the back of the door and climbed back into bed, sighing as Stephen curled around him tightly and kissed his shoulder.

“Is he okay?”

“He’s just worried about the comic book. Just thinking about things, as he does..”

“Did you tell him?”

“I asked him if it was okay if I hung my hat here for a bit. He didn’t seem against the idea.” Stephen relaxed around him, but didn’t say anything. “You do know I love you and Pete, don’t you? I know it wasn’t a traditional courtship by any stretch of anyone's imagination, but I hope you know this is where I want to be, and someday, maybe sooner than later, we can make it official, you know, throw a little party, exchange rings, or whatever…”

He sighed into the darkness as he felt Stephen sit up in the bed, then the room was flooded with light. He rolled over to find Stephen studying him carefully for a moment, then he asked slowly in a hushed voice, “are you saying you want to marry me?”

Tony sat up and straddled Stephen’s legs, then held his face in his hands, looked him in the eyes and nodded. “Yes. I know we haven’t known each other very long, but I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes you have to take a chance, when you find something or someone who makes life make sense, and oddly enough, Stephen Strange, even though I still don’t know the hows of how we ended up here together, it doesn’t matter, you and me? We make sense.”

“Yes.”

Tony whispered, “yes. He said yes,” then kissed him soundly and sweetly until he started laughing and couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry.” He drew back and tried to turn away, but Stephen wiped the tears from his face then shook his head at him and kissed his forehead, before he wrapped his arms around him and watched as he began to drift off to sleep once more.

“Don’t be sorry. When I heard you laugh for the first time two months ago, it was the moment my life began again. I didn’t think I’d ever love anyone again, or find someone who could love me, but you proved me wrong, so many times you’ve proved me wrong. Rest, my heart, just rest and I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”


End file.
